OK. Evasion really sucks. Baton Pass can easily be worked around. Just lead with Giratina-O and spam Dragon Tail against ninjask. Also, a surprise taunt means that the team loses. None of the evasion teams worked well. My team was so offensive(and included Dragon Tail+Taunt) that the evasion boosters rarely had time to do anything. Judging from what I have read in this thread, I think that we have come to an unanimous opinion.

I have been battling, and my opinion is that Evasion clause is better off as it is now. Sure, Evasion is a high risk, high reward strategy, but most of time if your opponent manages to grab that evasion boost and you miss, GG. It's like the same hax that you would have with Sand Veil, but much worse. Evasion moves like Double Team and Minimize, when used randomly, aren't really going to be fruitful. However, a dedicated Evasion team can sweep you if you aren't heavily prepared. The Uber metagame was much more healthy without Evasion Clause.

I have been battling, and my opinion is that Evasion clause is better off as it is now. Sure, Evasion is a high risk, high reward strategy, but most of time if your opponent manages to grab that evasion boost and you miss, GG. It's like the same hax that you would have with Sand Veil, but much worse. Evasion moves like Double Team and Minimize, when used randomly, aren't really going to be fruitful. However, a dedicated Evasion team can sweep you if you aren't heavily prepared. The Uber metagame was much more healthy without Evasion Clause.

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It is a high risk, low reward strategy. One of my losses were to Sand Veil Garchomp. I had no way of changing the weather. Draco Meteor and Ice Beam missed while Garchomp KOed both my Pokemon. The difference here is that Garchomp didnt have to do anything to get that evasion boost. It can also attack and have all four moveslots while having the passive evasion boost. Evasion boosters have to use Double Team/Minimize. They cannot attack while they boost and they have to use up a moveslot. The only pokemon that can use evasion effectively are those with both an evasion move and a substitute. That leaves only two moveslots left. How do you expect it to sweep? Mono-Dragon? Most Uber pokemon need boosts to get past Lugia. Also, if they are in sandstorm or toxic spikes are up, they will be losing health fast.(with substitute and no leftovers)
If you are so worried about evasion use can use Scarf Haze Zekrom(Zekrom doesnt need the four moveslots). Baton Pass teams lose to surprise taunts/roar. Unless evasion boosting teams have an Espeon, they will lose to Lugia(whirlwind needs to hit only once).

I rarely ever played against evasion and I didn't use it at all. It never worked when used against me. The handful of Baton Pass teams using it were easily phazed out. The Mono-attacker mons trying to abuse it with Substitute were easy spikes fodder and just needed one Roar/Whirlwind to waste their time. Evasion is underwhelming and banning it is only really going to bother BP teams, which aren't that amazing with it. It isn't giving them an answer to anything they couldn't get around already and still pretty much falls apart to the same threats it had to deal with before.

I haven't played against evasion a lot, I only played against one iirc. But imo it only depends on how lucky you are so it have to stay banned i wouldn't like to have a battle against a luck based team

I didn't played against a lot, only 6 times. Most of them were Baton Pass, it wasn't hard to handle because I used powerful sweepers and Giratina-O as a phazer and it depends a lot of haxx so it is a high risk and it's not broken. However, it is uncompetitive because it is a luck based team so it should stay ban

but most of time if your opponent manages to grab that evasion boost and you miss, GG.

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Can you describe a realistic and common situation where that would be true? Even assuming a situation where a free turn equals GG than the evasion person needs two misses. One on the turn they boost and one where they are making whatever free move they need to win a game.

I didn't played against a lot, only 6 times. Most of them were Baton Pass, it wasn't hard to handle because I used powerful sweepers and Giratina-O as a phazer and it depends a lot of haxx so it is a high risk and it's not broken. However, it is uncompetitive because it is a luck based team so it should stay ban

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Just because it is luck based doesn't mean we should ban it. Following that logic we should ban every attacking move in the game since there is a random variation in damage that can decide a game. I've lost more games to high/low rolls than I ever did to Double team or minimize.

Honestly, evasion moves are really costly as they eat up a move slot and invest mulitple turns just in the hope that in the long run you'll get enough hax to win a game. (somehow assuming that you can keep your evasion mon in for multiple turns to actually take advantage of the time you spend) It's cool on BP to help it get the free subs it needs so much, but like I said before it still loses to the same things it always has. (it just gets some wiggle room now) Mono sets are cool but they also lose to the same things as before and now need to rely on free Leftovers from unreliable hax instead of the already shaky Rest.

It shouldn't be ban because it is based on luck but because it is uncompetitive. All matchs are based on luck but miss your move because of an evasion move is uncompetitive even if it's rarely happened

It shouldn't be ban because it is based on luck but because it is uncompetitive. All matchs are based on luck but miss your move because of an evasion move is uncompetitive even if it's rarely happened

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This argument is flawed. Let me use your logic. All defense boosting moves help avoid XHKOs. These are therefore uncompetitive since it disallows a pokemon to die which is against our motives. Again, "all matches are based on KOing pokemon but failing to KO because of a defense boost is uncompetitive even though it happens"
Do you know why defense boosting is superior? They are consistent. You can still get hit(no defense boost)/taunted(you are a siiting duck afterwards) even after evasion. Do you know what these evasion/defense boosting pokemon have in common? They can be phazed. And they require certain moveslots. Evasion moveset example: Double Team/Recover/Substitute/Free Moveslot. Defense-boosting moveset example: Calm Mind or Bulk Up/Judgment or Physical Coverage/Recover/ Refresh or Substitute. Now tell me honestly, which would give you a better chance to win? Which one is more reliable? Why would you want to boost evasion when the opponent can just phaze you with Whirlwind? What is the end result? You gave your opponent free turns and then they still kill you eventually.

You can talk about baton pass. Baton Pass will usually lose to surprise taunts or whirlwinds or roar. I will say that something more dangerous already exists: Shell Smash Smeargle.

This argument is flawed. Let me use your logic. All defense boosting moves help avoid XHKOs. These are therefore uncompetitive since it disallows a pokemon to die which is against our motives. Again, "all matches are based on KOing pokemon but failing to KO because of a defense boost is uncompetitive even though it happens"
Do you know why defense boosting is superior? They are consistent. You can still get hit(no defense boost)/taunted(you are a siiting duck afterwards) even after evasion. Do you know what these evasion/defense boosting pokemon have in common? They can be phazed. And they require certain moveslots. Evasion moveset example: Double Team/Recover/Substitute/Free Moveslot. Defense-boosting moveset example: Calm Mind or Bulk Up/Judgment or Physical Coverage/Recover/ Refresh or Substitute. Now tell me honestly, which would give you a better chance to win? Which one is more reliable? Why would you want to boost evasion when the opponent can just phaze you with Whirlwind? What is the end result? You gave your opponent free turns and then they still kill you eventually.

You can talk about baton pass. Baton Pass will usually lose to surprise taunts or whirlwinds or roar. I will say that something more dangerous already exists: Shell Smash Smeargle.

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I aggree, defensive boosting is better than evasion boosting because it is more reliable. However, evasion moves are uncompetitive because it causes games to be decided on luck, miss a move like Hydro Pump is possible because it hasn't got a perfect accuracy but miss moves with maximum accuracy and then being swept is uncompetitive

This argument is flawed. Let me use your logic. All defense boosting moves help avoid XHKOs. These are therefore uncompetitive since it disallows a pokemon to die which is against our motives. Again, "all matches are based on KOing pokemon but failing to KO because of a defense boost is uncompetitive even though it happens"
Do you know why defense boosting is superior? They are consistent. You can still get hit(no defense boost)/taunted(you are a siiting duck afterwards) even after evasion. Do you know what these evasion/defense boosting pokemon have in common? They can be phazed. And they require certain moveslots. Evasion moveset example: Double Team/Recover/Substitute/Free Moveslot. Defense-boosting moveset example: Calm Mind or Bulk Up/Judgment or Physical Coverage/Recover/ Refresh or Substitute. Now tell me honestly, which would give you a better chance to win? Which one is more reliable? Why would you want to boost evasion when the opponent can just phaze you with Whirlwind? What is the end result? You gave your opponent free turns and then they still kill you eventually.

You can talk about baton pass. Baton Pass will usually lose to surprise taunts or whirlwinds or roar. I will say that something more dangerous already exists: Shell Smash Smeargle.

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Independently of what is better, what Zaon said is true. If you aren't using a move with perfect accuracy, your opponent is not guilty of this. Its you that decided to use that move, probably because it's more powerful. You must accept the fact that luck can be on your opponent's side, and because of this, one miss can cost a game. The person who controlled the luck was you, against yourself. However, evasion moves cause luck to be controlled by your opponent, against you. You didn't choose to lose because you didn't had luck, and that's uncompetitive. Competitive Pokémon is not a gambling game. I would be very frustrated if I had to use a phazing move or Taunt on every team just to combat evasion moves or evasion-based teams.

Also, not even defense boosting moves can help every time to avoid XHKOs because critical hits exist. You don't want to rely on Calm Mind every time to protect your Manaphy from Palkia's Thunder, since a critical hit will kill him anyway. It's a serious flaw, much like the use of evasion moves has. For this reason, I wouldn't say that it's more consistent. At best, I would say that it is as consistent.

I aggree, defensive boosting is better than evasion boosting because it is more reliable. However, evasion moves are uncompetitive because it causes games to be decided on luck, miss a move like Hydro Pump is possible because it hasn't got a perfect accuracy but miss moves with maximum accuracy and then being swept is uncompetitive

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Hmm..... OK. Seriously, how do evasion boosting moves help you sweep? You need an offense boosting move to take down walls like Lugia. OK. You use an evasion move and a boosting move. Example moveset: Boosting Move/Evasion Move/Attack/Coverage or Recovery or Substitute.

Ok...Now the two of you should provide me with actual examples with what can run such a moveset. It seems you are just throwing the concepts of evasion around without any evidence.
@DarkFallenAngel: If you dont have enough experience in ubers pleae dont bring up bad points. Calm Mind Manaphy vs Palkia using thunder. Please tell me more about how evasion would help here. Critical chance is 6.25%. Evasion moves dont boost you evasion by 93.75%. Hence I would not say that "Evasion is as consistent." Thunder has perfect accuracy in rain. With Calm Mind, Manaphy can 2hko Palkia after 2-3 boosts.

You need to realize that when you are using Evasion boosting moves, you are giving up a moveslot. Let's see what can afford to give up a moveslot in ubers: Reshiram, Zekrom; end of list. Well that is it really. Zekrom's moveset, judging from what you are implying or rather what is affordable, is: Double Team/Hone Claws/Dragon Claw/Roost or Substitute or Bolt Strike. Outrage isn't viable as the locking effect and chance to hit with confusion after boosted attack is a major hindrance and you destroy the purpose of this set. We have the set ready, now let us ask ourselves: What does it do? How much better is it than other sets? Groudon will switch in on you while you boost with Double Team and then threaten to Earthquake. Now what do you do? Do you stay in and sub? What if it is faster? What if it is the Offensive Stealth Rock Groudon? Do you expect to be faster? Would you really want to take a chance? Wouldnt it be better if Zekrom was the scarf set in this situation so that it could 2HKO Groudon?

If Zekrom lacks substitute and uses Bolt Strike instead, Ferrothorn can deal with it. Using Roost? Lugia can deal with it. Here is another problem if you are not using substitute: You haxed your way through a defensive Pokemon. The opponent sends out Mewtwo. Ice Beam hits and all your effort are wasted as you realize that you gave the defensive pokemon time to set up hazards or rapid spin.

This is assuming that you get many free turns. In a real battle this will not happen.

I would like some real examples or replays if you want to reply and disprove me.

Trivia: Phazing moves are extremely common in ubers: Groudon, Kyogre, Lugia, Giratina, Dialga, Palkia, Latias, Ho-Oh, Heatran, Arceus, Skarmory, Red Card Forretress. Are you telling me you dont have space for any of them? Contrary to what you said, most uber teams have phazing moves. Unlike in OU, where people run protect on heatran, phazing moves are always preferred when it is available to a pokemon.

@DarkFallenAngel: If you dont have enough experience in ubers pleae dont bring up bad points. Calm Mind Manaphy vs Palkia using thunder. Please tell me more about how evasion would help here. Thunder has perfect accuracy in rain. With Calm Mind, Manaphy can 2hko Palkia after 2-3 boosts.

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As if accusing others of not having experience in ubers was a good point... I've actually been in more than one situation where I was using a Calm Mind Manaphy against a Palkia, and all my efforts were ruined by a simple critical hit. Calm Mind is not of much help because most of time you are better off switching out. You don't want to boost on a thing that has advantage against you. Same thing with evasion.

What is true is that evasion is not of much help on a sweep, and that evasion moves waste a moveslot. That's why I said that randomly throwing Double Team/Minimize on a Pokémon is not the way to go. A dedicated Evasion team, such as Baton Pass (I can't give any other example at the moment) is what takes advantage of Evasion boosts to sweep your opponent.

As if accusing others of not having experience in ubers was a good point... I've actually been in more than one situation where I was using a Calm Mind Manaphy against a Palkia, and all my efforts were ruined by a simple critical hit. Calm Mind is not of much help because most of time you are better off switching out. You don't want to boost on a thing that has advantage against you. Same thing with evasion.

What is true is that evasion is not of much help on a sweep, and that evasion moves waste a moveslot. That's why I said that randomly throwing Double Team/Minimize on a Pokémon is not the way to go. A dedicated Evasion team, such as Baton Pass (I can't give any other example at the moment) is what takes advantage of Evasion boosts to sweep your opponent.

Mananphy sets up Calm Mind on the switch. It rest as Palkia uses Thunder. Palkia deals the same damage next turn while Manaphy uses Calm Mind. Palkia Thunders again dealing a maximum of 94% in those two hits while Manaphy rests the damage off. Again, Palkia Thunders, Manaphy Calm MInds.Manaphy is now at a maximum of 63%(after leftovers) and at +3.

Manaphy can now comfortably 2hko Palkia(provided that it has taken Stealth Rock damage) while Palkia fails to 2HKO Manaphy from 63% HP.

I have already addressed your point about Baton Pass teams. They benifit from evasion? How does evasion stop haze? How do Baton Pass teams get around surprise Taunts/Roars or red card Forretress?Anyway what are you trying to tell me? Even Baton Pass teams benefit more from defense boosts than evasion. The only Pokemon that can afford to use evasion-boosting moves is Drifblim. You arent proving anything.

Keep in mind that this thread isn't supposed to discuss evasion's viability, but its potential brokenness. I personally haven't seen a single evasion move in 50+ battles, and the fact that the discussion has come to this definitely makes me believe that it is not broken.

I, too, have not seen anybody using evasion. This leads me to believe that while it is not broken, in ubers, dub teaming is allowing your Ekiller to get to +6. Sure, you have that one pokemon, but the rest of your team is kinda screwed. And since my foe will only be at +3 while I'm at +6, I can still hit. Same for any set-up sweeper. Letting groudon get to +2/+4 is not good for your team. BP is moot, because giratina/Lugia nearly um, ALWAYS carry dragon tail. So, therefore, while it is not broken, I still think it should be banned.

I don't really get the "I only saw a few teams utilizing Evasion and while they weren't any trouble for my team, hell they often were a liability, I think evasion should still be banned."

If it isn't broken and everyone can handle evasion rather easily (and supposedly teams are worse when using evasion) then why should evasion be banned? Because it's luck based? So far (I only played 20 matches so my opinion might be changed from now until the voting thread) evasion based teams were extremely lackluster and in no way ban worthy. If I had a vote (which I'm trying to accomplish, damn you deviation and finals exams ;-;) I would vote to unban evasion from Ubers. Like people have said so far in this thread, you really can't afford to lose valuable move slots for Double Team/Minimize.

In a competitive game based mostly around complex strategy and thought, why wouldn't we want to remove an element that makes teams worse in general, but can swing a few close matches and be annoying in general? Evasion is kind of like jirachi (if jirachi were bad.) Everyone has that one story where a jirachi flinched their heatran or magnezone to death, turning the statistics on their head and sealing a match that should've gone the other way. I'm fine with that because jirachi is good, but evasion is clearly bad and has the same potential. All that adding it in can do is cause the worse player to win via luck, and that shouldn't really happen.

Now, if someone can manage to abuse it in a successful way, then it might be a different story.

Edit: Anikrahman's replay up there kind of shows what i'm talking about. Sure, it didn't work, and it won't work most of the time. But let's say he gets another miss or two, and has a bp recipient that's actually in the uber tier. Then the match could've gone the other way. Meanwhile, that's the most legitimate use of evasion possible in this metagame, and it revolves around drifblim, a NU/RU pokemon that's weak to SR. BP teams can replace evasion boosts with defensive boosts on both sides of the spectrum if they so desire, and use the drifblim teamslot for either an extra recipient, or just more boosters.

I'm going to outline my thoughts about the test in the stages that I witnessed during the round.

At the beginning, literally 5 minutes after the round started, I was under the assumption that evasion was broken, it should be banned, yada yada yada. The competition on the ladder against the BP team I was running was far too weak. It must have been evasion! Evasion was the reason that everyone was losing to the team! Then after testing against Theorymon, where I won one out of the three battles, my opinion began to change. Against a competent player who is expecting you to run evasion boosting moves, evasion isn't gamebreaking at all. With the high power of all of the Pokemon in ubers, a single hit can destroy Drifblim, who admittedly has the bulk to take things like unboosted outrage from Rayquaza, struggles to survive in a tier full of Thunder users. Smeargle is even easier to play around, as its low speed leaves it susceptible to being either Taunted, or having a sub set up on its face.

The main issue that i'm having with this is that I have not seen a sufficient sample of evasion teams to develop a true opinion. In a typical statistics course, you learn that you need a sample size of about 20 to analyze data. This is no different. I've seen maybe 4 or 5 teams that were built with the intention of abusing evasion. I cannot possibly make an accurate vote with these numbers, so I'll have to go off of the small sample that I have gathered. The main issue is that the teams that I saw were incredibly easy to play around. They always made similar moves, which caused them to be outplayed with ease.
So yeah. I've made reqs already, and I'm about to hit them on a couple alts, and
I'm going to say that I'll be voting to keep evasion legal in Ubers.

Independently of what is better, what Zaon said is true. If you aren't using a move with perfect accuracy, your opponent is not guilty of this. Its you that decided to use that move, probably because it's more powerful. You must accept the fact that luck can be on your opponent's side, and because of this, one miss can cost a game. The person who controlled the luck was you, against yourself. However, evasion moves cause luck to be controlled by your opponent, against you. You didn't choose to lose because you didn't had luck, and that's uncompetitive. Competitive Pokémon is not a gambling game. I would be very frustrated if I had to use a phazing move or Taunt on every team just to combat evasion moves or evasion-based teams.

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This doesn't make it ban worthy. Again, you might as well ban all damaging attacks except for Night Shade and Seismic Toss as your opponent can abuse multiple high rolls, secondary effects, or critical hits to hax past checks/counters they should lose to. (which wasn't a choice you decided to risk) There is always going to be a situation where your opponent can get a cheap win with hax, evasion is just another one of those nonviable ways to do so. It's more of a liability than an advantage. It's the reason why nobody slaps Bright Powder on everything and why it wasn't banned in Ubers.

In a competitive game based mostly around complex strategy and thought, why wouldn't we want to remove an element that makes teams worse in general, but can swing a few close matches and be annoying in general? Evasion is kind of like jirachi (if jirachi were bad.) Everyone has that one story where a jirachi flinched their heatran or magnezone to death, turning the statistics on their head and sealing a match that should've gone the other way. I'm fine with that because jirachi is good, but evasion is clearly bad and has the same potential. All that adding it in can do is cause the worse player to win via luck, and that shouldn't really happen.

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Jirachi's Iron Head haxing doesn't work in Ubers. (what happens in OU isn't our business, we aren't testing evasion there because the metagames are so different) Just because something bad CAN happen doesn't mean we should ban it. We ban things because, more often than not, they will happen and there is nothing reliable that we can do to deal with it.

There's nothing ban worthing about evasion, I think, at least on ubers, it's really easy to deal with it (taunt, somewhat powerful attackers, etc.), and yeah, maybe a team can be based on "luck", but, at the same time, just look on what does Pokémon what it is now, people running Scald on place of Surf? That's because the 30% chance of burn, what is about the same chance you have to miss an attack against someone who used only 1 time Double Team, yeah, people some times prefer to risk a bit, because on Pokémon, prediction, and risk-reward tactics are common. I do not think a risk-reward tactic should be banned just because it had luck on it, because if we do that, then we should ban Scald, and a lot of others moves.

And yeah, if you think evasion is not broken, then it should not be banned.

Also, someone had to use 1 turn on set up a Double Team, but the enemy have to fail 2 attacks in a row in order to win a single turn, and that's almost as probable like hit a Critical Hit with a high-critical hit move, derp.

And the "100% attacks should land 100% of times" is a bad argument, there's a lot of things that can make your "perfect accuracy" attack to fail, ability's, moves, and a good amount of other stuff, I don't think we should ban things just because they have a luck factor on it, or we will even end banning things like Critical-Hits and stuff, because the luck factor, this's not Smash Bros..

Ah, and yeah, if someone wants to try Minimize/Double Team, it should be done with paralize and/or confusion before, it will increse at some degree your chance of win at least an extra turn, also, paralize can't be cured at all, and confusion can't be really phazed (and Confuse Ray can allow you to surpass a possible phazing). Stack evasion boost is not a really good idea, the evasion win once you pass the 2+ is really small, it's better to then start to set up anything else.

Like many others I haven't seen much of evasion on the ladder so its hard to decide if it is broken or not, however judging from what I seen its absolutely not broken, its rather week. Any good player should not loose to it.

However I built a team testing baton pass with evasion, and as I said its impossible to beat any player who knows what he's doing, its also a autoloss against a lot of things. For me its just a fun gimmick with you can get some wins with at the lower half of the ladder.

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I obviously used a ninjask to get my speed up and if my opponent messed up and I got a free sub then I could use double team and once I passed one boost to my gliscor it could utilize toxic heal+sub+protect to stall until a miss and max out my evasion, gliscor is also immune to thunder which is great. Once gliscor is in with speed and a single evasion boost its pretty much gg. (Taunt is a option over protect to stop roar,taunt etc.)

I don't find evasion broken as it isn't hard to stop and in contrast to the ohko moves you can stop it consistently, therefore I think it should be unbanned.

reqs

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This doesn't make it ban worthy. Again, you might as well ban all damaging attacks except for Night Shade and Seismic Toss as your opponent can abuse multiple high rolls, secondary effects, or critical hits to hax past checks/counters they should lose to. (which wasn't a choice you decided to risk) There is always going to be a situation where your opponent can get a cheap win with hax, evasion is just another one of those nonviable ways to do so. It's more of a liability than an advantage. It's the reason why nobody slaps Bright Powder on everything and why it wasn't banned in Ubers.

Jirachi's Iron Head haxing doesn't work in Ubers. (what happens in OU isn't our business, we aren't testing evasion there because the metagames are so different) Just because something bad CAN happen doesn't mean we should ban it. We ban things because, more often than not, they will happen and there is nothing reliable that we can do to deal with it.

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My point wasn't really that it worked, or that we should test evasion there. My point is, everyone has those times where complete luckhax screws them over, even when they were clearly dominating. Jirachi, being a commonly used OU pokemon with bulky quadresists that OHKO it/trap it, was the best example i could use at the time. I would've used skymin as an example, but it doesn't paralyse and it lacks quadresists, as well as being revenged by priority rather easily. If it's not adding anything EXCEPT luckhax matches like this, why even allow it in? Look at what kebabe's saying. I think we can all agree evasion BP is probably the most viable of any evasion-based strategy, because it allows you to get around having a sweeper with 3 moveslots for actually sweeping. And the result? An auto-loss, apparently.

You can't ban attacking moves... because they're most of the game. As for the other haxy stuff, it's annoying, but it adds a mechanic to the game that isn't clearly unviable like evasion is. Rolls add uncertainty. For example, if the average of your roll damage fails to KO me, but the higher rolls KO me... i might want to switch out. Misses add power versus accuracy decisions. Flinches and secondary effects mostly add in strength over effects calculations, with a few freebies. Critical hits are just annoying, but they nerf bulky boosters, which otherwise would be much, much more threatening. There's always going to be a way for the enemy to win via hax? That's like saying there will always be a way to break the laws, so we should get rid of the police. Of course there will be, but no sense in making it any easier.

And BTW, your banning philosophy totally ignores the original meaning of evasion clause, which basically exists for most of the reasons i'm saying.

Edit: My point it it's silly NOT to ban something that is underwhelming and inefficient because it CAN with enough hax steal a game for you. If your opponent is going to take that risk, odds are you'll win the game, sure, but then you might get really unlucky and not do it. Confuse ray at least has a purpose, i.e. forcing switches, and t-wave cuts speed by 1/4th. And the original meaning was perfect-why add in a mechanic whose only purpose will be to cause hax wins?